


The Cowboy and the Witch.

by Gallusadin



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:35:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21348109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallusadin/pseuds/Gallusadin
Summary: Yet another day of writing in an attempt to sharpen my creativity and improve my skills. I post these publicly because I am a masochist.





	The Cowboy and the Witch.

10 / 31 / 19 “The Cowboy and the Witch” He’s an outlaw from the wild, wild west; she’s a witch from the old country.  
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The young witch danced through the halls of her modest cottage with a grace that would inspire envy in the very wind. Plucking from the many cabinets and shelves that lined her walls a curious assortment of herbs and esoteric ingredients; stacking them so high they nearly spilled out of her arms. It was a warm, comfortable place. A cottage made of clay bricks, stacked nearly eight feet high; with a roof of woven thatch and grass that sloped over the eaves and let the rain run off easily. Moss and vine ran up the bricks, on both the inside and out, and the cottage felt very green. In the center of this humble home lay a brick chimney that seemed to always give off smoke, with a great big pot of cast iron in the center. A pot which, this day, was being filled with a great amalgam of strange ingredients tossed in by this stunning young woman.

Young she was indeed, having just recently left her teens behind; and fair. For beneath her jet black hair and crimson eyes (the markers of a witch) was a delicate beauty that drew men from great distances to make her acquaintance. Sometimes out of admiration, other times of curiosity; often of both. The young witch had begun to make a habit of concealing the true nature of her abode, nestled between the trees in the forests north of the Catalarian heartland. 

“That was originally the plan for today”, she sighed to herself with a smile, dicing strange glowing mushrooms and examining a beaker of viscus red liquid for its consistency; before dumping both into the boiling cauldron, which violently produced a cloud of smoke in response. You see, today was the first day of the fourth month, the time when her spell of concealment had nearly faded away, and when the necessary reagents to produce a new one would be concocted. 

“That is, before I stumbled upon you dear” she chuckled aloud sweetly, turning to regard a man who lay unconscious on a large cot in a corner of her abode; bathed in sunlight from the windows all around him. It had been nearly three days since she had found him lying face down just off the trade way between Catalar and Esthelm, soaked in his own blood and half alive. Fortunate for him she had been making the journey for those reagents at the time, or he would have surely bled out! 

He was a handsome man, to be sure. Of strong, slender build and tall. With an angular, gruff face lined with a beard that had just begun to show the first signs of advancing age. The broadness of his chest soiled only by the still-recovering scars of a devastating musket wound. Every day since she had found this unfortunate man lying in the dirt, the young witch prepared the strongest healing salve she had in her repertoire, and tended to the grave wounds. As she ladled a healthy portion of the thick liquid from the cauldron into a wide bowl, and gathered her sponges, the young witch couldn’t help but admire the sheer tenacity of this man. An inch from death and pale as ivory when she first stumbled upon him, each day seemed to restore a significant measure of the man's color and strength. She approached him tentatively, unbuttoning the white buttons of his shirt and exposing the scarred remnants of his calamitous wound. Forgetting herself in that momentary lapse of judgement awe brings, she found herself tracing her fingers over the tender flesh and nearly jumped out of her robe when the seemingly comatose man grunted loudly and shot up from the cot.

The witch lept back in terror, hiding as the man she had predicted still days away from recovery sprang to life in her cot like a flower given rain. Could he really be this strong? Now what should she do?

Wincing from the intense pain such an abrupt motion left him in; almost as though a punishment for his foolishness, the man recoiled back into this tower of pillows and surveyed his surroundings. Always alert, always suspicious. That was the mentality that kept him alive.

“Well” he thought to himself “at least, it had kept me alive”. And it was true; for his keen senses and distrusting nature had done little to protect him from that sudden, fierce ambush all those days ago. Unconsciously running his fingers over the scars on his chest where the bullet had taken him, he nearly swooned over in pain as waves of white hot agony washed over his body. 

“Fuck” he growled under his breath; none to fancy the speaker he was, after all “Note to self, don’t do that again”

Still, he was amazed that the wound had healed at all. Bullet holes to the chest aren’t known as survivable wounds, and clearly he had been found on the road and taken in.

The answer to all his unspoken questions revealed herself from behind on the of the many cupboards that lined the hallways. Immediately awestruck by this strange, impossibly beautiful woman, a chord of terror struck the man. Perhaps he had died, and was being tended to by an angel. Afterlives are so mysterious and confusing after all. 

More likely, however, he had been dragged away into the den of an evil witch; and she had only nurtured him back from the brink of death so that she may eat him alive! Ignoring the tremors of agonizing pain, deft hands shot to his waist to grab hold of guns that were not there. 

“No, please!” cried the witch, running to his side, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and trying to lay him back down in bed. “You are not well yet” she wrestled him back “you have not yet had time to heal!”

“Heal?” the man growled incredulously, though the tone of his voice was significantly softened as the young women's silk soft arms wrapped around him. “Is that what I'm supposed to believe yer doing to me?” eyeing her suspiciously, though lying back against the pillows once again.

“Yes” she shot back over her shoulder, gathering her bowl and rags “Heal, you know? That death sentence of a wound in your chest”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah” she mocked in his thick drawl, He was handsome and strong to be sure, but what a block head!

“Well then, thank you” he said more to the ceiling than to her. This place was warm, he noted. Full of light, and plants, and life; as though it radiated outward from her. Turning on his good shoulder and struggling to sit up slowly, he regarded the woman as she sat on a stool beside his bed, and soaked one of the rags in a strange green liquid. 

“Who do I have the privilege of being saved by?” He asked the ceiling once again, not yet willing to make eye contact with the woman. He had seen that flash of red, and knew what it promised; but he was too weak to stand, and knew that she had him at her mercy. Best to play along. 

“My name is Elibra Noffensturen Zibralder” she spoke very seriously, pulling the shirt back and exposing the wound once again, layering the potion soaked rags atop it tenderly.

“Is that- Argh, a name?” the man grunted through the pain as the rags stacked up “Like, one that people use?”

She shot him a glare like daggers that might well have reopened the scars, “I am come from the elder lands far over the Harrowspire, to the west. It is a name passed down in my family!” it was her turn to growl.

“Oh” the man corrected, averting his eyes to the side “Yer from the old world then” 

“Yeah” She said softly, again mocking his accent. “My friends call me Elly though”

“Do witches have friends?” he spat out, perhaps a tad harsher than he had intended. “I mean, aside from like, frogs and beetles and all that…” He rattled on, a very poor correction.

“You have very keen eyes, and are better educated than you appear” She laughed, boring her crimson orbs deep into his eyes; ice blue they were, though she realized that this was the first time she had really seen them. “But no, witches have less friends than they would prefer” she meandered absentmindedly, tending to the wound. “Especially witches so far from the homeland”

“What, may I ask, is your name?” She asked suddenly, breaking from her ramblings. “I refuse to be caught at a disadvantage”

“I don’t have a name” The man contemplated somberly, gazing out the window and wistfully admiring the trees in the distance “I lost that long, long ago” He fell into contemplations.

“What a load of horse shit” Elly broke into a deep, belly laugh that shook the man from his thoughts. “Everybody has a name, and I sure won’t be calling you “sir” till you leave” She added tersely, closing up the buttons on his shirt, the treatment being done for the day. Standing from her stool, she left the dumbfounded man as she danced to the kitchen.

“I suppose” the man coughed, “I suppose ye can call me Sebastian, I guess” Though he wasn’t exactly sure where he had gotten that name from.

“Well, Sebastian” Elly called out, popping her head back into the room from behind the chimney. “Would you like something to eat”

You could have told him an earthquake was tearing through the countryside, or a wild bear was on the loose in the hallway, and it would not have provoked as primal a desperate reaction as that word “eat”. How many days had it been? Weeks? He couldn’t know, but by the gods. Suspicion tamed (for now) and pain accepted, his hunger had come roaring back like a primeval serpent. 

The trip they took to the kitchen was a long one, and painful. Sebastian had been hurt worse than he thought, and the miracle of Ellys medicine clearly had more work to do before he could move on his own. Thankfully, he didn’t need too; and Elly took his arm over her shoulder and bore enough of his weight so that he could sit next to the window, alongside the garden. 

Exhausted, Sebastian watched in awe as she moved through the small kitchen with such grace it seemed as though she floated. No clatter of plate or swinging open of pantry, only the sweet humming of her song as she prepared lunch. What a lunch it was! Honeyed tea that brought a flush to his cheeks and inspired song in his heart; sweet bread baked with berries, vegetables, no doubt from the garden just outside, and roasted venison so tender that Sebastian began to cry. 

“Everything alright?” Elly asked, eyeing him curiously, munching on a small piece of fruit bread.

“Yeah, yeah, of course” Sebastian lied. His road had been a hard one; kindness was rare, and often to be viewed with either suspicion, or contempt. But here had this woman, this kind, wonderful woman taken him from the brink of death and reinvigorated him with a warmth he hadn’t known in years. The tears did not stop.

“That’s just the tea” she giggled, ruffling his hair and getting up for another glass, her flowing robe silently swaying behind her. “You don’t have too much experience with magic, do you?” she eyed him inquisitively.

“No, not really” he sniffled away the tears and wiped his eyes, “Just my guns, but-” the realization snapped him from his trance and his eyes narrowed. “My guns, where are my-?” But he was silenced with a gentle hand to the forehead that stopped him in his tracks, filling him with a deep calm. 

“They are safe, I have them locked away for when you get better” Elly promised into his ear “I am no thief” 

“No, of course not” Sebastian breathed deep, reclining in his chair and taking another draft of that enchanted tea, “I’m sorry, they’re really the only things I have left to my name, if I lost them I may as well have died out on that plain”

Elly frowned at the admission, “I didn’t go through all the trouble of bringing you back for some guns” she huffed, sitting back in her chair and burrowing her chin in her palms, looking at him.

“Well, we never really got there” grunting through the pain as he turned to meet her gaze. “Why exactly DID you bring me back”

“It’s a long, long story”


End file.
